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Image Credit: Stephen Dwyer
Research Assistant
The US Republican Party and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have both historically co-opted “growing economy” rhetoric to maintain favor with a majority of their respective citizenry. By 2019, projections of slowing growth in 2020 — alongside the unpopular US-China trade war — began slowly shifting both parties’ dominant rhetorical narratives from “we bring you a good economy” to “this enemy wants to harm our good economy.”
COVID-19 suddenly and rapidly threatened public safety and economic growth, prompting a perception from each party (which was sometimes accurate) that their domestic citizenry was unsatisfied with certain aspects of their COVID-19 response and were, therefore, questioning the parties’ legitimacy to lead their country. This perception dominated Chinese politics from January to early March and US politics from March onwards.
Both the Republican Party and CCP responded to these perceptions by increasing the speed and magnitude of their narrative shifts from “good economy” to “bad enemy.” US “hawks” and Chinese “wolves” spread conspiracy theories and grand narratives of political economy — tactics which are indicative of strongmen-style politics and surprisingly uncommon at those levels of government — in order to catalyze this shift.
This shift took the form of four major narratives between the two countries: (1) US military transmission of COVID-19 to Wuhan, (2) use of the term “Wuhan/China Virus,” (3) Chinese mask diplomacy, and (4) a Wuhan lab developing COVID-19.
Despite that, within these narratives, the Republican Party depicts China (or sometimes specifically the CCP), as the enemy and the CCP depicts the US (or sometimes the Trump administration) as the enemy, the political motivations and rhetorical tactics utilized by each party and its current administration are strikingly similar. Xi Jinping’s administration has been more successful in achieving its goal of regaining domestic support than Donald Trump’s.
Most every compelling story must contain four things: (1) an unexpected conflict, (2) a scheming and powerful antagonist, (3) a modest and relatable protagonist, and (4) a beginning. So when COVID-19 steamrolled everyone’s pre-conceived personal plotlines for 2020, some started to use stories to explain the disruption and posit novel ways to overcome COVID-19’s actual and rhetorical peaks and valleys.
People from all around the world have been using narratives to place blame and make sense of the pandemic. From Brazil to Russia to China to the United States, conspiracy theorists have accused a myriad of villains — Bill Gates, China, the US, and even “shadowy powers” — of actively creating the virus to fulfill some purpose, such as to profit off of a vaccine or harm another country’s economy. The magnitude of social media shares, as well as the endorsement from semi-famous public figures (e.g. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) and celebrities, has suggested that a sizable portion of citizens around the world seem more inclined towards believing conspiracy over scientific analysis. But conspiracy in the face of change is nothing new; it is the actions of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela — who himself concurred on the conspiracy of COVID-19 as an American-created bioweapon — which reveal a worrying trend: some public leaders around the world, including leaders of the world’s two largest economies, are either magnifying or espousing conspiracies, almost always with the inclusion of an international antagonist as central to the narrative.
For years, US and Chinese collaboration epitomized the idea that international cooperation benefited everyone, as was on full display during their joint responses to the 2008/09 global financial crisis and the Ebola outbreak. But with COVID-19, US “hawks” – anti-China public figures like Peter Navarro, Michael Pompeo, and Tom Cotton – and Chinese “wolves” – anti-US public figures like Deputy Director of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs Information Department Zhao Lijian – seem more interested in naming, blaming, and shaming over collaborating and cooperating. Only weeks apart in March, Zhao Lijian pushed the conspiracy that the US army introduced COVID-19 to Wuhan while United States Senator Tom Cotton suggested the conspiracy that a Chinese weapons lab created the virus.
Under the leadership of Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, international collaboration has been replaced by a months-long narrative “tit-for-tat” which dwarfs the popularity and impact of any other COVID-19 related narrative. The rest of the world has noticed, with the Prime Minister of Singapore, United Nations, European Union, US Centers for Disease Control, and World Health Organization all either disapproving of US-China noncooperation or embarking on efforts to dispel virus misinformation.
As COVID-19 approaches 20 million cases worldwide, misuse of rhetoric and misinformation has not only limited multilateral coalition building but has likely degraded public trust as well. This has inhibited otherwise more effective public health responses and, ultimately, resulted in the preventable loss of human life. So, while public health specialists and virologists investigate the truths about the origins, spread, and symptoms of COVID-19, it is also worth investigating the origins, spread, and symptoms of COVID-19 narratives. What narratives have become popular, how have they been spread, and why?
To answer these questions, research from the often-overlooked field of narratology has been used to analyze the rhetorical patterns and underlying political and economic motivations of the hawks and wolves. The lens of narratology, which studies how somebody (or some organization) can use narrative tools to “tell somebody else (or others) on some occasion for some purpose that something happened,” extends and solidifies secondary source analysis that has, thus far, relied mostly on intuition to analyze the rhetoric. Through analysis of primary and secondary US and Chinese sources, one can find surprising similarities between the rhetorical patterns and political motivations of the US Republican Party (under President Trump’s leadership) and the Chinese Communist Party (under President Xi’s leadership).
In the face of the rapidly changing health, social, and economic consequences of COVID-19, both the Republican and Chinese Communist Parties responded to perceptions of domestic dissatisfaction with their pandemic response by rapidly catalyzing already slow-moving rhetorical shifts from “good economy” to “bad enemy.” These shifts heated up in February of 2020 and plateaued by the end of May; and since the global economy is not expected to recover before 2021, the rhetorical shifts will likely not reverse course anytime soon. To quickly execute these shifts, hawks and wolves utilized ‘strongman’ rhetorical tactics, such as magnifying or spreading conspiracies that tap into paranoid, “us vs them” narrative structures. In doing so, they stoked nationalism, likely with the goal of improving short-term domestic favor. This rhetorical shift included a handful of major metaphors and narratives worth summarizing and analyzing: (1) that the CCP perpetuated the conspiracy of the US military introducing COVID-19 to Wuhan, (2) the Republican Party’s use of the term “Wuhan/China Virus,” (3) Chinese mask diplomacy in Europe and Africa, and (4) the US conspiracy that a Wuhan lab created and leaked the virus. Throughout this shift, despite that the Xi administration has depicted the US as China’s current adversary (“a them”), and the Trump administration has depicted China as the US’s current adversary, each party seems to have found inspiration from the playbook of the other.
Narratologists call this “irony.”
As Roland Barthes famously remarked, narrative “is present in every age, in every place . . . it is simply there, like life itself.” But narrative is not a structure. Narrative is the act of a teller using the resources of narrative (including fiction, the ultimate “what if”) to achieve a purpose with a specific audience. Politicians utilizing fictive rhetoric often provide verbal and visual hints (e.g. the tone of sarcasm) to communicate their transition into fictive discourse; however, politicians do sometimes walk the thin line between fiction and lies, and conspiracy often festers within that line. Because rhetoric is formed for a purpose, analyzing rhetoric with an understanding of the underlying political economy can draw insights into the likely purpose of the rhetorician.
Narratives are certainly not novel to the modern age. Centuries ago, Aristotle used his work Poetics to lay narrative frameworks which are still useful today. If a truth or reality can exist, Aristotle argued, science could bring us one step away from that truth, while poetics (narratives and rhetoric) could bring us two steps away from that truth. This spectrum is exemplified by the difference between immunologist and Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci, who speaks with the language of science one step from the “truth” of COVID-19, and Republican Senator Tom Cotton, who speaks with the language of political rhetoric two steps away from that “truth.”
Modern narratologists developed this idea further by distinguishing between the actual and authorial audience. Whereas the former refers to the actual flesh and bone person, the latter refers to that person responding to the author in a way that would otherwise seem unordinary. In the setting of a university classroom listening to the lecture of a professor (author), Jane Doe may raise her hand to ask a question; in the setting of a movie theatre watching the film of a director (author), she may suspend her disbelief and think that aliens are attacking the Earth. However, in the setting of the dinner table eating a meal with her family, raising a hand to ask a question or believing in hostile aliens would seem particularly abnormal, even though they seemed appropriate within different settings with different authors. Depending on the situation and author, actions and behaviors that would normally feel uncomfortable as an actual audience member may seem probable, cathartic, and appropriate to Jane as an authorial audience member.
Within the realm of political rhetoric, Jane Doe may employ this same shift from actual to authorial audience when taking the position of the freedom-loving Republican who, within the seat of viewing the political theatre of President Trump or Senator Cotton, may actually prefer the probable impossibilities of familiar right-wing narratives over the probabilities of scientific analysis. In the context of scientific analysis (one step from “truth”), China manufacturing COVID-19 as a bioweapon is improbable; in the context of Trump’s years of rhetoric casting China as an enemy (two steps from “truth”), China manufacturing COVID-19 as a bioweapon to harm the US economy is probable, and (for Trump’s purpose) even preferred. This example highlights a critical trend: that citizens can take on the role of an authorial audience member and suspend disbelief to perceive the scientifically impossible as probable, as long as it appropriately fits the narrative patterns of the respective political rhetoric.
Conspiracy theories, which loosely mimic scientific theory, can serve as temporary stepping stool between science and fictive rhetoric; and unfortunately, without the distinction these two “steps away from truth” deserve. Practitioners of conspiracy use oversimplified fictive structures to loosely connect individual facts to create an unusable, but aesthetically appealing, false bridge of truth; to use elementary plots to equate loose or coincidental correlation with certain causation that is “far closer to truth” than any science could otherwise produce. Of course, for the conspiracy-speaking narrator or receptive listener, “truths” take the form of normalized, “us vs. them” and “fight or flight” ideas. And compared to complex scientific explanations, many will find simple conspiracies, which follow the same narrative patterns of the popular movies, video games, television shows, and literature they are used to, as easier to connect with and understand. Indeed, since “narrative is one way of attempting to make sense of traumatic situations,” the familiar patterns of conspiracy narratives are likely to bring comfort during the fear, trauma, and loneliness from this unprecedented social distancing and heightened probability of death.
Thus, during a time when practically everyone’s life has been disrupted and when major public health decisions are often being made without global coordination or consistency, it is actually quite reasonable that, without the capability to fully understand one step away from truth (either because of a lack of access to information, a lack of ability to take part in or view the decision making process, or a lack of education in the sciences), people throughout the world, including in the US and China, are turning to narratives to make sense of the sometimes seemingly senseless nature of a global virus and major economic downturn. What is less easier to accept is how some public figures have utilized rhetoric to act on those peoples’ vulnerabilities.
From January to March, China faced the trifecta of rapid virus spread, sudden economic slowdown, and scrutiny from Western journalists, leaders, and scholars, who often extended their critique of the lockdown of Wuhan to condemnation of both the Chinese Communist Party and China’s model of political economy. On March 12th and 13th, Zhao Lijian responded to these critiques by tweeting to his almost 300,000 followers multiple times sharing a disproven, Canadian-based conspiracy that COVID-19 originated in the US and was transmitted to Wuhan by the US military during the October 2019 Military World Games. “Please retweet to let more people know about it… it might be the US Army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan… US owe us an explanation!” Chinese ambassadors around the world did retweet the conspiracy, which was widely rejected by the international and scientific community and likened to “a full-blown Russian-style disinformation campaign.” Curiously, both China’s ambassador to the US, Cui Tiankai, and the CCP itself condemned and censored the conspiracy. Despite all the criticism, the topic “Zhao Lijian sent out five consecutive tweets questioning the US” was shared almost 5 million times on China’s twitter equivalent, Weibo, its contents universally praising his actions.
Despite that Zhao’s spreading a conspiracy almost guaranteed criticism, Professor Victor Shih offered an explanation of the minister’s motivations: during the CCP’s biggest crisis of legitimacy since Tiananmen Square, this conspiracy helped to deflect Chinese citizens’ blame away from the CCP. For decades, the CCP has maintained a somewhat straightforward social contract with its citizens, who seem both aware of and typically accepting of this contract: they sacrifice certain freedoms in exchange for three things: economic growth, Chinese sovereignty, and public safety. Yet even before 2020, the CCP had failed to hide previous insecurities regarding all three of these pillars of social contract (the US-China trade war, paranoia of malicious US influence in Hong Kong, and “re-education” camps justified as eliminating terrorism).
COVID-19 and the lockdown of Wuhan prompted a sudden and powerful destabilization of these already compromised pillars: an economic shutdown, broad Western criticism, and a life-threatening, fast-spreading virus. In those initial two months, Chinese social media was flooded with the speculations, questions, and critiques of millions of Chinese people suddenly stuck at home for weeks with nothing but their fear and their free time. Leaked images of haphazard hospital environments and news of police suppression of the whistleblower-turned-martyr Dr. Li Wenliang ignited a viral wave of domestic criticism throughout January and February. This critique took aim at the initial response from the provincial officials in Hubei, who were viewed by citizens and the CCP leadership as irresponsible and corrupt. Indeed, a sizable portion of the critique did praise Chinese writer Fang Fang’s Wuhan diary and averred that the state-controlled lockdown infringed on their freedoms, relating the issues to the “fundamental problems of the political establishment.” However, most Chinese leaders and citizens criticized the diary and maintained that lockdown measures followed WHO recommendations, protected the Chinese people, and gave the rest of the world ample time to prepare.
Despite that the majorities blamed Hubei officials, and not the CCP, the CCP’s previous insecurity regarding all three of its pillars of legitimacy was catalyzed by this self perception (only partially warranted) that it had partially failed to respond effectively to COVID-19’s aforementioned trifecta and that this failure had caused a serious loss of domestic support. That perception drove the CCP to employ censorship towards online critique and to use the magnification of the US military conspiracy as a tool for expediting the rhetorical shift from “good economy” to “bad enemy” so as to divert attention away from public health mismanagement and regain domestic support. For the average Chinese citizen taking the authorial audience place as a party member, the scientifically impossible military conspiracy seemed rhetorically probable within China’s extremely powerful, long-term narrative of the “century of humiliation.” Zhao – a foreign ministry senior bureaucrat, not a scientist – recognized the rhetorical efficacy of framing the US as a scheming antagonist within easier-to-accept “us vs. them” logic. His purpose — to portray CCP leadership as wolves able to bark in the hawk’s own nest (twitter) — sought to kill two birds with one stone (一箭双雕): to divert citizen confusion and anger away from the CCP and towards the Western, “other” and then use that diversion to excite nationalism that would increase domestic favor.
So when President Donald Trump began using the term “China Virus” in early March – explicitly in response to the US military conspiracy – this actually validated the CCP’s narrative. To be clear, naming a virus after its geographic origin is racist, is discouraged by the WHO, and is rooted within the controversial field of eugenics, where “the emphasis on nation and national fitness obviously plays into the metaphor of the body. If individual citizens are not fit… then the national body will not be fit… ” Republicans’ use of the terms “Wuhan/China Virus” use this “false idea of the body politic” to personify two nations as two people — a protagonist and an antagonist — and over-simplify extremely complicated international tensions into a “spiritual wrestling match between good and evil.”
For Donald Trump, the use of this term comes from his position as 2020 Republican Presidential candidate Trump, not as either US President Trump or international “leader” Trump. Before March, Trump constantly praised President Xi’s virus containment efforts. But as his own early-response mismanagement — and the resulting early signs of record unemployment — began to crystalize, candidate Trump expedited his shift from the “good economy” to the “bad enemy” narrative in an attempt to bolster his chances of re-election. In-line with Trump’s 2016 campaign rhetoric, it has been China which has been depicted as the enemy and Trump’s political rival as friendly with that enemy.
Through utilizing this one term in explicit response to Chinese-shared conspiracy, Trump effectively rallied support with his base in four ways. First, he reaffirmed the “us vs. them” narrative within his previous “America First” foreign policy and stoked domestic nationalism through this simple, metaphorical boxing match with China. Second, he displayed his swift willingness to defend the US military, whose soldiers often vote Republican. Third, he established himself as the ordinary, “just-like-me” cap-wearing protagonist who “perceives” the plain truth better than “those” science-obsessed, politically correct, left-wing elites in Geneva. Finally, by instigating criticism for his racist remarks, he effectively distracted — if even for a short time — reporters and analysts from focusing criticism on his administration’s initial mishandling of the virus. Indeed, this crisis does “require science, facts, and clear language, not fear-mongering, finger-pointing and xenophobia from our public servants.” But as authorial audience members within political theatre, US right-wing citizens likely view Republican representatives’ act of using this term as an implicit message: that they (the representatives) will stand up to foreign enemies to protect their citizens. And those audiences like that simple message.
While Trump’s administration sought to shift blame amongst his base regarding his mismanagement, the CCP sought to highlight that mismanagement amongst both its domestic base and the international community. By mid-March, China had successfully “flattened the curve” of new, daily domestic cases, while Western countries were seeing their curves steeply rise. In response, the Chinese public and private sectors sought to help with medical supply shortages. France, Austria, Italy, Belgium, Spain, and Ireland all received assistance that they appreciated as, in the words of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, reciprocal. But this medical equipment came à la Chinese narratives. These narratives, as part of a “global disinformation campaign,” included conspiracies, accusations, articles, censorship, public declarations from Chinese officials, and explicit requests to praise China or tone-down criticism. Western and Eastern scholars and journalists immediately understood that as Western countries responded less effectively to COVID-19, the CCP had taken advantage of the “disaster opportunism” to push an ideological, often-times zero-sum-gain, grand narrative that cast aside its own initial mishandling of COVID-19 and sought to portray the CCP as an organization that, through its more authoritarian, state-led model of political economy, was better able to respond to this public health crisis than countries adopting the Western, democratic model.
This “global battles of narratives” backfired almost immediately. Citizens and representatives in France, Italy, Germany, and Sweden all sought to “defend” Europe’s style of Western democracy. Mask diplomacy in Italy, the Netherlands, Lithuania, and Africa made it clear to Europeans that one major motivation for China’s assistance involved ambitions regarding 5G contracts and its Belt and Road Initiative (including its “Health Silk Road”). Reports of faulty medical equipment and medical supply hoarding further damaged Western reception of Chinese mask diplomacy. From one perspective, the CCP’s goal of improving its international economic opportunities by positioning its model of political economy as more effective — especially during crisis situations — than Western models completely failed.
However, from a second perspective, this mask diplomacy represents a domestic success for the CCP. Despite that, by March and April, it would have been impossible to use any social science to convincingly prove a hypothesis relating health responses to models of political economy — and despite that Singapore, Vietnam, New Zealand, Germany, and the UAE, all countries with vastly different models of political economies, responded effectively — China utilized a rhetorical tactic of refocusing the conversation on broad questions of entire governance systems, “traffic[ing] the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values.” Even though, at this point, the conversation should have focused on public health, China’s rhetorical shift effectively served its purpose. By April, many Chinese citizens were praising their governance model while disparaging that of the West. Significantly, Chinese social media widely expressed disappointment towards a US which had been expected to respond more effectively and ridiculed US citizens’ refusal to wear a mask; a refusal which, notably, has been fueled by right-wing, misinformed narratives of freedom. The sentiment that “China ha[d] outperformed while America ha[d] disastrously falter[ed]… [was] shared by even educated, internationalized Chinese observers.” Mask diplomacy may harm globalization and, by extension, China’s economy, but it certainly helped the CCP regain domestic support.
Even before China’s mask diplomacy, as early as February, semi-famous Republican figures and Fox News articles began circulating a conspiracy (and comparing it to dystopian fiction) that a Wuhan laboratory had manufactured COVID-19 and either willingly or accidentally (depending on the narrator) released the virus. Soon, prominent Republican representatives joined the chorus of pushing this conspiracy over scientific analysis; by April 15th, Trump himself was publicly discussing the conspiracy and calling for an investigation around the same time that other Republican representatives were attempting to sue China for economic damages.
Although it is true that multiple intelligence reports, which alleged that the CCP intentionally hid or destroyed evidence regarding its initial response, had prompted Germany, France, Britain, the EU, Australia, and Canada to call for an independent, scientific investigation, this call for investigation and the conspiracy are non-related. The conspiracy has been widely discredited in Europe, in China, and even by the US intelligence community, which curtly responded to Trump’s request for non-existent evidence. US and Chinese public figures alike understand that President Trump was attempting to use the conspiracy to shift blame from his administration’s mismanagement and that candidate Trump had done so in hopes of regaining support from his right-wing base.
Weak economic conditions have unseated re-election candidates before, and Trump had previously planned on campaigning on the strength of a “good US economy” that is now unlikely to see either a “V” or “U” shaped recovery anytime in 2020. As his right-wing base became increasingly aware of — and dissatisfied with — the administration’s mismanagement and resulting economic recession, Trump’s campaign explicitly signalled leveling up their demonization of China for re-election purposes. Interestingly, just as the CCP sometimes looped its short-term rhetoric and use of the US military conspiracy back into its bases’ long-term narrative of the “century of humiliation,” Trump and the Republican Party sometimes looped its short-term rhetoric and use of the Wuhan Lab conspiracy back into its grand, McCarthy-style right-wing narrative that demonizes all things communism and “deep state.” For the right-wing, China and its Communist Party position easily position into its oversimplified narrative views of communism as “a perfect model of malice” which is able to “make crises” (COVID-19), “cause depressions” (the 2020 recession), and “manufacture disasters” (bioweapon made in a lab) which are all the “the consequences of someone’s will” (the will of the CCP) in order to — thanks especially to China’s international mask diplomacy — “profit from the misery he had produced.”
Through the lens of science, Anthony Fauci fails to “get what they’re talking about,” because it is exactly just that: talking. Through the lens of rhetoric, these conspiracies can be viewed not as deceptive poison but as honey-glazed, easier-to-swallow medicine for a first-term President seeking to prescribe an electoral victory amongst a right-wing base craving not science, but familiar narrative.
COVID-19 has created health, social, and economic vulnerabilities amongst billions, some of whom have responded to the need for comfort and control by craving out simple, two steps away from truth, familiar and paranoid-filled “us vs. them” narratives; and justifiably so, considering the hundreds of thousands of deaths thus far. Although most academic disciplines, such as those of the one hundred Chinese scholars who urged cooperation between the US and China, would lead to concluding that global cooperation based on scientific evidence would best protect human life and encourage economic recovery, the academic discipline of narratology best explains the recent conspiracy filled, strongman-style, nationalistic rhetoric utilized by both the US Republican and Chinese Communist Parties.
Both parties have historically used a “good economy” or “bad enemy” rhetorical approach for consolidating support amongst its base of citizens. COVID-19’s immediate impact on already slowing economic growth in both countries triggered a rapid acceleration of a rhetorical shift which had already begun within each party, and especially under the administrations of President Xi and President Trump: to shift from the “good economy” to “bad enemy” narrative. Somewhat accurate perceptions of popular dissatisfaction of public health mismanagement seemed to immediately threaten support for each party, supercharging each parties’ willingness to resort to the “bad enemy” narrative. Through the use of strikingly similar rhetorical tactics, hawks and wolves expedited that shift in attempts to shift domestic blame away from their own party’s mismanagement and towards the enemy country (with the US only recently shifting blame towards the CCP specifically), ultimately to consolidate short-term support for their party, even at the expense of medium-term international relations. The use of the simplified metaphor of the nation-body made it possible for “communist” China and “imperialist” America to fit neatly into the personified slot of the “other” in both countries decades-old grand narratives; and during a moment of mass vulnerability, hawks and wolves executed the shift via the rhetorical tools of conspiracy and grand questions of political economy. Whereas the rhetoric of the CCP under President Xi Jinping seems to have achieved most of its goals, that of the Republican Party under President Trump seems to have failed.
This analysis has sought not to analyze any particular public health response, extend an analysis of the sort to review entire models of political economy, nor question the legitimacy of a particular political party. Rare is the organization that does not employ some level of rhetoric as a means of communicating (either effectively or ineffectively) with a broader audience, and awareness of rhetorical tools does not equate to critique. However, the question of how to respond to the COVID-19 health pandemic deserves clearly communicated scientific responses. In the face of the global pandemic and recession, fulfilling peoples’ need for understanding and control with rhetorical narratives, instead of science, equates to feeding starving citizens with snacks instead of meals. Indeed, a combination of transparency, humility, and avoidance of conspiracy would help the US save lives and help China gain international trust. But the rhetorical shifts described, which finished their accelerated shifting in late May, have led to the further deterioration of the US-China relationship, despite the global benefits of cooperation.
This is, unfortunately, no longer a cooperative age of flying tigers. This has been the age — hopefully, one short-lived — of squawking hawks and barking wolves.
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ICAS would like to conclude this commentary by expressing its sincerest condolences to the countless families affected by the global tragedy that is the COVID-19 outbreak.
Stephen Dwyer is an incoming Masters of Public Policy graduate student at the Harvard Kennedy School and has previously worked with the Economics Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and with the Institute for China-America Studies. Danny Du, an incoming Master of Public Administration candidate at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, contributed to the collection and analysis of primary Chinese-language sources for this primer. This report reflects the sole opinion of its author.
The Institute for China-America Studies is an independent nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to strengthening the understanding of U.S.-China relations through expert analysis and practical policy solutions.
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Sincerity and Tolerance of Criticism are Needed to Mend U.S.-China Ties